Chapter Text
She’s ten minutes late, and if it were anybody else, he would have left by now. Lateness to the negotiation table often belies a lack of professionalism, but then that’s kind of the point this time, isn’t it? She’s a special case, a break from his usual fare. Usually he wouldn’t even consider it, but it’s a pride thing at this point. The referral hinted that he had a reputation to uphold, and Ben is nothing if not stubborn.
(It was one time. It’s not like his cock is magic or anything, he just knows his angles and he knows how to listen, a thing sorely lacking on the male side of hetero sex, and suddenly the girl who’d never cum from penetration was a g-spot convert. Word gets around, apparently.)
He first clocks her by the way she chooses to stand in the rain, umbrellaless, rather than coming inside right away, bouncing on her toes—nerves. She’s in the kind of yellow rainboots he’s only ever seen in children’s books, and her cotton tunic clings to her skin, sagging more with every second as the water coaxes it down. He sees her take in a forceful breath, steeling herself, before she all but charges through the door, not the least bit sheepish about it. She wheels about, wide-eyed, before she catches his eye, and he raises one hand, beckoning her over.
Ben has never really done vanilla. He falls more easily into the rigor and ritual of BDSM, something with clearly defined boundaries and rites of passage. People are more upfront with who they are, taking on labels and laying them on the table. He’s used to a meet that involves exchanging contracts, not one so uncomfortably like a first date. Nonetheless, he makes small talk, put her at ease. After a while, she stops fiddling with her hair and bouncing her leg. She’s sorry she was late, her bus was late, she works two day jobs and sometimes a night gig, she explains. He pretends to be interested.
After a moment, the small talk lulls. Rey takes another one of those violently deep breaths, “big girl” breaths, and blurts out, “So how do we do this?”
He tries to think of a nice, non-intimidating way to respond, a vanilla way. “Usually it helps to know what the issue is,” he begins, “if you have any idea.”
“Um,” she says. Her fingertips are tapping the table, her knee is bouncing again, and suddenly she’s just talking a blue streak. He gathers that it’s a combination of things: the stress of having basically worked full-time since she was 16, being homeless for a stretch, a cultishly Puritanical foster parent. “At first it was, like, ‘the girls at school are lying about it,’ and then it was ‘they’re whores of Satan, obviously,’ and then I was just working like 18 hours a day and would fall into bed half-asleep already.” She forgets to inhale, chokes for a moment catching her breath. “And a couple of times I looked it up on the internet, and I tried to—um, you know.” Her cheeks turn a virginal pink that’s just downright adorable. “But I’ve never had great fine motor skills.”
“Have you tried toys?”
“Once or twice, but it was, like—” her whole face scrunches up, trying to find the words. “Kind of nice, but after more than a couple seconds, kind of ouch.”
He nods soberly, his mind already running away with him. “What made you decide that now was the time?”
A frantic little laugh bursts from her, as if unbidden. “Well, it’s embarrassing. Not that anyone’s, you know, comparing notes, not since, like, high school, but it’s hard to really consider myself sex-positive”—she whispers the words conspiratorially—“when I have no idea what the fuss is about.”
And it’s something about her nervous energy and her bubbly demeanor, or maybe the baby hairs framing her face, or the rainboots, or everything else that just screams adorable—whatever it is, it’s awakening The Beast. He’s grappling with it, lost in his head, and the silence gets to be too much for her. “So, um, do you think we can, you know...” She searches for the right euphemism. “Get me to...get me to...climax?”
She all but squeaks the word, reddening further, covering her chapped lips with her hands, eyes widening. She’s scandalized at herself, but is nonetheless eager, every bit the innocent schoolgirl who’s never kissed a boy. And fuck, The Beast is hungry. He tosses his head and laughs. “Get you to cum, you mean?” She gasps, shushing him, then is giggling alongside him.
After he catches his breath, he snaps his gaze to hers, all business. Her last giggle ends on an intake of breath, pinned down by his eyes.
“It would be my pleasure,” he answers, and then, without a word, Rey slips from her seat, leaving her coffee half-drunk, tossing a coquettish glance back at him to make sure he’s following, turning into a radiant smile when she sees that he is.
This is going to be fun.
*
They go to his place, which is a rarity for a first meet—not that a first meet usually ends in an actual scene, but this is already an atypical situation. Usually the girls he plays with would rather start off somewhere neutral like a playroom or club, for their own safety, which he respects. Rey, on the other hand, is gung-ho about going home with a stranger. It’s a little concerning, really, but the naked, innocent curiosity on her face as she sizes up his place lulls that side of his brain to sleep. He makes her wait outside while he preps the bedroom, once again in the opposite direction of his usual prep: instead of setting out the tools of his trade, he’s hiding them away, feeling like he’s in college again, purifying his apartment before his parents come into town. He doesn’t want to scare her off with a coil of red rope or a stray flogger.
Tonight, all he really needs are his hands.
She’s already settled into his space by the time he opens the bedroom door, kicking off her rainboots in a disorderly way, several feet apart. One sock, too. Her bag has been tossed haphazardly across the couch, and her hair tie is on the rug. She’s combing her fingers through her loose hair now, still damp, and stray droplets of water from her soaked top make a trail straight to the kitchen island where she’s sitting. She looks up when she hears the door open, and he beckons her wordlessly, his inner dom purring when she scampers obediently through the doorframe and clambers onto the bed.
(There’s going to be a damp spot on his sheets from the rain, but Ben doesn’t mind. If things go his way, it won’t be the only one.)
“Do I take off, um, everything?”
“If you’re comfortable, it would be ideal.” He has his hands clasped in front of him, awkward, while she wrangles her head through her sodden tunic and shakes the leggings from her ankle. Usually he’s occupied with some other scene-setting task during this part of the night, putting on gloves, untangling rope, lubing up. He doesn’t know what to do with his limbs.
Unoccupied as he is, he sees the pause in her eager energy as she reaches for the hem of her ragged sports bra. Shy little thing. She takes another one of those big-girl breaths and takes the plunge.
Reflexively, one arm comes up over her nipples, but she quickly swings it back down, making brief eye contact with him as if daring him to make a nasty comment. “Good,” he says simply.
Then her panties, little cotton briefs with polka dots and a modest lace trim at the waistband, join the damp heap on the floor. He can see now that the loose hug of her clothing was hiding quite a pleasing figure, petite-ish. She has curves, but as she moves, he can see taut muscles under them, ones that don’t come through gym memberships but from a lifetime of repetitive labor. She’s not bony, but there’s a soft hollow of shadow before her hip gives way to her belly. The absence of a tan in the shape of a tank top. The requisite pearly stretch marks in the places where a girl becomes a woman.
“So,” she huffs, swinging her arms once, as if to say here I am. “That’s me.”
“You have a lovely figure,” he tells her, cordial. Not too mushy, not too clinical. As he passes by her, he traces the tan line that cuts her collarbone in two, a First Touch. First Touches are a big deal for Ben in a scene. Where and how he touches a new playmate for the first time, or even an old one, is a blessing, an omen, a greeting. This one says, I see the things that make you unique. I see the story your body tells.
In response, her fingertips light on his, clumsy, as if to say hello right back. Then he gives her shoulder a little nudge, inviting her to sit on the bed.
As he drips oil from a massage oil candle onto his hands, he starts to walk her through it all. “Lead-up is very important for women,” he tells her. “The reason going straight to your lady bits with a vibrator might feel uncomfortable is that those nerves aren’t awake yet. You can wake them up from here”—he kneads the heel of his hand between her shoulder blades, easing her down on her belly—“or here...” He explores her geography, pays attention to her breathing. A long exhale tells him she holds tension in her shoulders. A little butterfly inhale tells him her erogenous zone saddles the back of her hips, her tight little ass, the backs of her thighs.
Her skin glistens and softens, sucking up the oil. When he taps her thigh and asks her to turn over, there’s a chaotic flush of velvet pink across her chest, a delicacy in the way she moves. She’s more responsive, leaning into him as he palms one breast. “Oh,” she manages as he rolls his thumb across one nipple. Her lower back arching in response is a surprise to her, but not to him—the perky little peaks on her chest were practically begging to be touched. From behind the curtain of her hair, she catches his eye, a flood of nervous mirth causing her to giggle.
He isn’t a huge cuddler save for aftercare. That’s not why he’s in this, but her little hand is over the back of hers as he continues to fondle her, copying his movements like a child learning to write, and there’s pure wonder on her face at the sensations in her body. Pulled by an impulse he barely understands, he settles onto the bed behind her and lets her lean back on his chest.
“Comfortable?”
“Yeah,” she whispers breathlessly, but one of her legs is bouncing. He stills it with a firm hand on her inner thigh, spreading her a little.
“You sure you’re okay?” He leans to the side, trying to catch a glimpse of her expression, get a read on what she’s feeling. He smells citrus and rain in her hair.
“Just—nervous,” she breathes. “Um, scared that it’s not gonna work still.”
“You don’t have to perform for anyone. If it doesn’t happen tonight, it doesn’t happen. I won’t be disappointed.”
“’Kay,” she whispers, seeming relieved, letting her legs splay out a little farther. He takes that as his cue to continue.
“Once you’re feeling good and relaxed,” he murmurs, tracing the fingers of one hand up her inner thigh, “That’s the time to really start touching the good parts.” He stays caressing her thigh for a moment, and she shivers. “Tell me how you’re feeling down there now.”
“Kind of...warm? Or tingly, even.” He explains the physiology, the bloodflow and nerves waking up in response to stimulation. For the first time, finally, he caresses her slit through the curls. She’s starting to get wet, and she gasps and jerks her hips into his hand a little bit. Fuck.
“Good,” he chokes, “that’s good.” Through the curls, her finds the warm, sleeping nub of her clit, still hidden in its hood. Just a few gentle circles, and he feels it start to pulse to life under his fingertips. He forces himself to focus on her, to watch how arousal pulls at her body—the curve of the spine, the thighs falling further apart, the quickened breath. As he adds pressure, a helpless bleat bursts from her lips. She’s quick to cover her mouth, scared to offend.
“Sorry,” she pants through her palms, her eyes glued to his fingertips. With his free hand, he pries her hands away. In a voice more ragged than he’d like to admit, he says, “Don’t hold back. Tells me I’m doing my job.”
For a moment he dips his fingers back down, gathering the growing wetness to ease up the friction he’s about to put her clit under. His hand stalls there—she’s so warm there, her cunt practically begging to be filled by something—but she cranes his face up towards his, her pupils blown into caverns, and says, “Just—please, what you were doing before? That felt really good.”
There’s no way he could say no to that. Some other time, an unbidden thought tells him.
In a matter of seconds she’s arching again, her lower back fully levitating off of him, and he has to press one broad palm to her belly to keep her still. “Relax,” he hums into the crown of her head. She does her best to obey, sweet girl. A forlorn mewl and her clit flickering under his fingers tell him she’s close. And fuck him if she doesn’t start begging for it.
Barely able to catch her breath, she’s gasping, “Please—fuck—something’s—don’t stop, holy—holy fuck—please, please, Ben—”
The sounds she makes when she cums will replay in his head forever. Ecstatic keening, punctuated by hiccups, dissolving into fuck, Ben, fuck. He has to pry her thighs apart with his free hand to keep her open for him until her orgasm shudders to a slow stop. When she tries to shut them anyway, he knows she’s done.
Her arms fall limp at her sides and she sucks in air like she’s been drowning. He palms a lock of hair out of her eyes, a gesture he doesn’t think he’s ever performed before. Her eyes are closed, a runaway strand of hair stuck to her lips, which are slack, cherubic.
He doesn’t know what to do.
Finally, she stirs, flinging her arms up in a just-woke-up stretch, narrowly missing glancing off his cheekbone. “Hooooly shit,” she wheezes on an exhale. “So that’s what all the fuss is about?”
Caught off guard, he laughs harder than he has in awhile, jostling her up to sitting, making earthquakes with his chest.
Motherfuck, he is painfully hard.
*
Seeing her off is one of the more conflicting things he’s done tonight. He wants her to stay, he wants to fuck her so hard he throws up afterwards. He wants to be her big spoon and dress her in one of his shirts, and nothing underneath.
He never wants to see her again.
Before she leaves, she flings her arms around him after a second’s hesitation. “Thank you,” she breathes into his side. “You were amazing.”
“I can’t believe nobody’s ever done that for you before.” He’s almost offended about it, really. Her laugh chimes as she lets go of him.
“Never been with anyone.” Ben’s brain bluescreens. “Anyway, hey—if you ever want a coffee, I guess, um...”
“I’ll think about it.”
The crestfallen pout that adorns her face leaves an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Oh, okay. Well, um...I hope you have a good night.”
“You too, Rey.”
*
He beats his cock as furiously as if it’s a disobedient submissive, coming with a fierce grunt into the shower drain. He can’t stop thinking about how she’s a virgin, how he should’ve known, how he should’ve said yes to coffee, made her stay.
She’s too precious. That’s the problem here. The people he plays with aren’t so damn innocent, so in wonder at their own bodies, so untouched. They know what they want, they have rules, boundaries, control. They know where things start and where they end, and that’s why he doesn’t do vanilla sex, that’s why he doesn’t date—he likes the order, he likes the disconnect, he likes the lack of attachments. He drops the ones that catch feelings like they’re hot potatoes; they’re complicated. Liabilities. Unpredictable.
He deletes her number, but finds her hair tie on the floor later, and the memory of that rain-and-citrus smell knocks him back.
She has so much to learn and, as a presumably straight woman, slim pickings for good men to learn it with. She doesn’t even know how to get herself going, take it slow with her own body, tune in, let go. She’ll settle for a lifetime of bad sex and bad boyfriends because she doesn’t know any better. She needs a teacher.
Ben’s never been any good at that.
In the scene, the submissive is the real lead. They’re the person with limits, the person who knows exactly how deeply they want to fall. The dominant is a person with a duty of care, an attentive ear, a person who makes fantasies come true. How do you do that for a person who doesn’t have any fantasies, who doesn’t know how to follow the compass of pleasure?
He’s still lost in his head by the time he turns off the lights and tries to settle down. He wonders if this is dom drop; he’s never had it before, and it wouldn’t make sense given the very vanilla nature of the evening, but nothing about his feelings tonight have made sense.
There’s guilt: guilt for giving her a taste of something, an ideal of how straight male partners act that many of them won’t live up to, guilt for rejecting her when he could’ve just been nice and then ghosted. There’s regret for not taking it further, keeping her here a little longer, talking it through more.
Then there’s hunger. A yawning pit that’s desperate for more. That’s almost the most confusing part: how he wants something so opposite to what he seeks out regularly. He wants to see that look of awe on her face again when her body does something she didn’t know it could. He wants to see her discover just how good she can feel. He wants to be the one to pop that glistening cherry and know that he’s the first person to make her feel this way.
Almost the most confusing part, because the most confusing thing in his head right now is tenderness. There’s some kind of protective instinct in him that wants to wrap her in blankets and tuck her in. Brush her hair, kiss her forehead, hold her hand. And if there’s one thing Ben Solo does less than vanilla, it’s tender.
Better this way, then, that he’s deleted her number, that he’s said no to coffee. He’s too confused, untethered from his mooring as a dominant. Hell, she doesn’t even need a dominant, has no conception of what that is, has never fucking had sex. He’s too much for her and too little for her all at once.
Better this way, for both of them.
And yet...
The next week, it’s raining again. It’s past midnight, and he’s just gotten home from a playdate at a local club, starting to feel like he might be himself again. He had a gagged boy in a chastity belt crying under the cane in front of thirty people, then wrapped in a blanket and talking about his investment portfolio in the aftercare room. It was a good night.
He’s just about to go to bed, kneading the kink out of his whipping shoulder, when he catches sight of her damn hair tie tucked half out of sight under his nightstand, and like a prophecy, his doorbell rings.
He knows in his gut that it’s her before he opens the door, and the hungry part of him, the part that still hasn’t fully retreated for the night, sings.
No umbrella again, absolutely soaked and shivering. Big yellow sweatshirt with pink elbow patches, denim sticking to her thighs. Mascara running. Miserable and embarrassed, tail-between-the-legs, Rey.
“Do it again,” she chokes out, seeming afraid he’ll slam the door, reject her a second time. “I’m a grown woman, it’s so embarrassing, but I’ve tried and tried and I can’t do it. Please, Ben, I feel like I’m going crazy.”
He lies to himself that he’s cautious, aloof, sober, as he directs her to a towel on the floor so she doesn’t make a mess (again). Professional, risk-aware, boundary-keeping. But deep, deep in his belly, so low it might as well be his groin’s beating heart, he knows he’s not letting her go a second time, not the way she did last time. She needs him, that much is clear, and, more than an outlet, more than a whip in the hand and a ring on the cock, Ben needs to be needed.
This First Touch is an omen, a ritual, an oath, under the sweatshirt, palm flush to the small of her back. I’ve got you.